How to best manage photos with Lightroom?

Question

I recently started taking RAW photos and purchased Lightroom 3 to manage them. So far I have not found the ideal way to manage them. Here's basically how my workflow goes:

1. Import the RAW files from the camera to a specific import folder.
2. Edit the RAW files.
3. Once the pictures look good, convert the files to JPEG and save them to my photo album folder.
4. Keyword the photos, possibly add comments etc.
5. Save the original RAW files to external hard drive.

Currently Lightroom does not know my photo album folder exists and I've used it only to edit the pictures in the import folder.

However, I'd like to use Lightroom also to manage my photo album. But what would be the best way to handle that? Is there a better way than to export the photos to my album and them import the album folder? I assume export does not include the ratings etc if I set them while editing the RAW files?

Ideally I would of course keep the RAW files in my album, but my laptop has limited hard drive space, so I can't do that. Besides, I like to keep all the album files in JPEG so I can use them easily anywhere without additional exports.

Answer

It sounds like you're fighting Lightroom's natural workflow a bit. Here's my suggestion, which is pretty close to a "standard" workflow for Lightroom:

• Import your RAW files. As part of the import, you've got the option to move the files to another location -- that would be your external drive. Following the import, then, Lightroom knows about your photos, and the location it knows for those RAW files is the external drive.
• Keyword tagging and ranking in the Library module.
• Edit any photos you wish in the Develop module -- it's ok to swap this step with tagging if you'd rather do it in that order.
• Export your photos to your album folder.

At this point, you can disconnect your external drive and you'll still have the photos in your album. If you want to do any work with those photos, though, you'll have to have your external drive connected.

Regardless of whatever tuning you do to your workflow, you want to make sure that once photos become known to Lightroom, you're using Lightroom to manage moving those photos, if necessary. This is because Lightroom handles all of its manipulations and metadata as additions to your original photo (your RAW files). If you change the location of that RAW file in a way that Lightroom isn't aware of, you're going to end up having to help Lightroom find the new location for that file before it can continue.

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